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One hundred years ago today, on 21 August 1895, Wilhelm Steinitz defeated the Russian champion, Mikhail Chigorin, in the great international tournament at Hastings. Chigorin slipped from first place in the tournament and Emanuel Lasker took the lead.

It was an important day in the history of the world championship title. When the young Lasker defeated Steinitz in 1894, there was a view, loudly trumpeted by the great German champion, Dr Siegbert Tarrasch, that the correct title for Lasker was "world matchplay champion". Another title of "world tournament champion" was needed, he argued, to recognise the man whose results were consistently best in the world of tournament play. And who more worthy than the winner of Breslau 1889, Manchester 1890, Dresden 1892 and Leipzig 1894 - Tarrasch himself.

But the good doctor could only finish fourth at Hastings behind Pillsbury, Chigorin and Lasker. Those four, together with Steinitz, who finished fifth, were all invited to a showdown "Match-Tournament" at St Petersburg at the end of 1895. Tarrasch pleaded pressure of work and dropped out, then Lasker won the event so convincingly that the issue of his rights to the title of world championship never came up again.

The game that we began with was one of many fine contests between one of the last of the old romantics and the new scientific school of Steinitz. Chigorin, true to type, played the Evan's Gambit; Steinitz, just as loyal to his own beliefs, took all the pawns thrown at him and defended imaginatively.

Instead of 15.Qa6+, White should have played 15.Nxe5 when Bxc5 loses to 16.Qa6+ Kb8 17.Nxc6+, while 15...Nd7 is met by 16.Nxc6+. In the game, White won the exchange for two pawns, but the endgame was always good for Black. 27...Ra8! was a fine move. As Lasker himself wrote: "A rook being very well qualified to support advancing pawns and to check the advance of the hostile king, it is judicious play to avoid its exchange for the present." Here are the moves, White Chigorin, Black Steinitz: